INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Volume 26 Number 1 March 2012 ARTICLES An Inferential Model of Scientific Understanding Mark Newman 1 Evidence and the Assessment of Causal Rela...

Attention seems to raise a problem for pure representationalism, the view that phenomenal content supervenes on representational content. The problem is that shifts of attention sometimes seem to bring about a change in phenomenal content without a change in representational content. I argue that the representationalist can meet this challenge, but that doing so requires a new view of the representational content of perception. On this new view, the representational content of perception is always (...) relative to a way of attending. I call this the attention-indexed view of perceptual content. (shrink)

Properly understood, content internalism is the thesis that any difference between the representational contents of two individuals' mental states reduces to a difference in those individuals' intrinsic properties. Some of the strongest arguments against internalism turn on the possibility for two "doppelgangers" –- perfect physical and phenomenal duplicates -– to differ with respect to the contents of those of their mental states that they can express using terms such as "I," "here," and "now." In this paper, I grant the (...) stated possibility, but deny that it poses any threat to internalism. Despite their similarities, doppelgangers differ in some of their intrinsic properties, and it is to such intrinsic differences that differences of indexical content reduce. (shrink)

The verb 'knows' is often taken to be context-sensitive in an interesting way. What 'knows' means seems to be sensitive to the epistemic features of the context, e.g. the epistemic standard in play, the set of relevant alternatives, etc. There are standard model-theoretic semantic frameworks which deal with both intensional operators and context-sensitive expressions. In this chapter, we provide a brief overview of the various moving parts of these frameworks, the roles of context and index, the need for double indexing, (...) and the relationship between semantic value and content. With the best version of the standard framework explicated we then return at the end to the treatment of ‘know’ as a context-sensitive intensional operator (contrasting it with an invariantist treatment). (shrink)

Many of our thoughts are about particular individuals (persons, things, places, etc.). For example, one can spot a certain Ferrari and think that it is red. What enables this thought to latch onto that particular object? It cannot be how the Ferrari looks, for this could not distinguish one Ferrari from another just like it. In general, how a thought represents something cannot determine which thing it represents. What a singular thought latches onto seems to depend also on features of (...) the context in which the thought occurs. This suggests that its content is essentially indexical, contextually variable much as the content of an utterance like 'I am hungry' depends on who utters it and when (see DEMONSTRATIVES AND INDEXICALS). The indexical model of singular thought is not limited to thoughts about individuals one perceives, like the Ferrari driving by, but applies also to thoughts about individuals one remembers or has been informed of, like an old bicycle or Christopher Columbus. In each case, a certain contextual relation, based on perception, memory, or communication, connects thought to object. (shrink)

I argue that a recent variation on the Sleeping Beauty case due to Titelbaum [2012a] puts significant pressure on Lewis's theory of doxastic content—the theory of content that Titelbaum and others presuppose. In particular, that theory cannot make sense of the rational constraints on credences imposed by the Principal Principle, as ordinarily understood. I then argue more generally that any theory on which contents of credences are sets of centered worlds cannot adequately represent all of the rational constraints (...) on credences. (shrink)

Indexicals are linguistic expressions whose reference shifts from context to context: some paradigm examples are ‘I’, ‘here’, ‘now’, ‘today’,‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘that’. Two speakers who utter a single sentence that contains an indexical may say different things. For instance, Fred and Wilma say different things when they utter the sentence ‘I am female’. Many philosophers (following David Kaplan 1989a) hold that indexicals have two sorts of meaning. The first sort of meaning is often called ‘character’ or ‘linguistic meaning’; the (...) second sort is often called ‘content’. Using this terminology, we can say that the word ‘I’ has a single character (or linguistic meaning), but has different contents in different contexts. (shrink)

In her review of my book How we remember: Brain mechanisms of episodic memory, Sarah Robins highlights my example of the problem of interference between memories accessed by content-addressable memory. However, she points out the difficulty of solving this problem with index-addressable representations such as time cells or arc length cells. Namely, the index-addressable memory requires knowing the unique index in advance in order to perform effective retrieval. This is a difficult problem, but should be solvable by forming bi-directional (...) associations between an index-addressable sequence of time cells and an array of content-addressable features in the environment. (shrink)

Reichenbachian approaches to indexicality contend that indexicals are "token-reflexives": semantic rules associated with any given indexical-type determine the truth-conditional import of properly produced tokens of that type relative to certain relational properties of those tokens. Such a view may be understood as sharing the main tenets of Kaplan's well-known theory regarding content, or truth-conditions, but differs from it regarding the nature of the linguistic meaning of indexicals and also regarding the bearers of truth-conditional import and truth-conditions. Kaplan has (...) criticized these approaches on different counts, the most damaging of which is that they make impossible a "logic of demonstratives". The reason for this is that the token-reflexive approach entails that not two tokens of the same sentential type including indexicals are guaranteed to have the same truth-conditions. In this paper I rebut this and other criticisms of the Reichenbachian approach. Additionally, I point out that Kaplan's original theory of "true demonstratives" is empirically inadequate, and claim that any modification capable of accurately handling the linguistic data would have similar problems to those attributed to the Reichenbachian approach. This is intended to show that the difficulties, no matter how real, are not caused by idiosincracies of the "token-reflexive" view, but by deep facts about indexicality. (shrink)

Charles Travis influentially argued in “The Silence of the Senses” that the representational theory of perceptual experience is false. According to Travis, the way that things look cannot index the content of experience as the subject of the experience cannot read the content off from the way things look. This looks indexing is a central commitment of representationalism. The main thrust of Travis’ argument is that the way things look is fundamentally comparative, and this prevents the subject from (...) reading a single content off from the way things look. If content were looks indexed, the subject would be able to do this. I argue that Travis’ argument rests on an illicit transition from an argument about the way objects look in themselves—i.e. an argument about the visible properties that they have—to a conclusion about the way that objects look to subjects in experience. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Half‐Title Page Wiley Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Preface List of Abbreviations.

The prelims comprise: Half‐Title Page Wiley Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Page Table of Contents Acknowledgements.

The prelims comprise: Half‐Title Page Wiley Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Page Table of Contents Acknowledgments.

Gestures can serve as external representations of abstract concepts which may be otherwise difficult to illustrate. Gestures often accompany verbal statement as an embodiment of mental models that augment the communication of ideas, concepts or envisioned shapes of products. A gesture is also an indicator of the subject and context of the issue under discussion. We argue that if gestures can be identified and formalized they can be used as a knowledge indexing and retrieval tool and can prove to be (...) useful access point into unstructured digital video data. We present a methodology and a prototype, called I-Gesture that allows users to (1) define a vocabulary of gestures for a specific domain, (2) build a digital library of the gesture vocabulary, and (3) mark up entire video streams based on the predefined vocabulary for future search and retrieval of digital content from the archive. I-Gesture methodology and prototype are illustrated through scenarios where it can be utilized. The paper concludes with results of evaluation experiments with I-Gesture using a test bed of design-construction projects. (shrink)

Indexicals are unique among expressions in that they depend for their literal content upon extra-semantic features of the contexts in which they are uttered. Taking this peculiarity of indexicals into account yields solutions to variants of Frege's Puzzle involving objects of attitude-bearing of an indexical nature. If names are indexicals, then the classical versions of Frege's Puzzle can be solved in the same way. Taking names to be indexicals also yields solutions to tougher, more recently-discovered puzzles such as (...) Kripke's well-known case involving Paderewski. We argue that names are in fact rigidly designating indexicals. We also argue that fully developed, the direct reference theory's best strategy for solving the puzzles amounts to the adoption of the indexical theory of names – a move that we argue should be thought of as a natural development of the direct reference theory, and not as antagonistic to it. (shrink)

Swami Sahajananda, the founder of the Swaminarayan Movement, considered by his followers as an embodiment of Krishna, let Swami Shatananda write the Satsangijivanam in order to vouchsafe that his presence and teaching live on among his followers in and through this text. The extensive work is composed in Sanskrit and is here presented in an English summary. The text describes the biography of Swami Sahajananda and is an important document for the religious situation in the Gujarat of its time; it (...) testifies to the religious practices by which Swaminarayan wanted to replace practices that were considered as abuses. The content of the text is made accessible through a detailed index. (shrink)

According to the propositional view of belief, a belief situation involves a believer’s standing in the relation of belief to a proposition. It is argued that the propositional view has unacceptable implications concerning the identity conditions of belief situations involving beliefs with indexical contents, especially where such beliefs are held over a period of time during which background circumstances change. After a critical discussion of Perry’s alternative to the propositional view, a version of the adverbial theory of belief, which (...) accounts satisfactorily for the identity conditions of belief situations, is advanced. This theory, which avoids the standard objections to adverbialism, is defended against the charge that it cannot provide an account of the semantics of sentences attributing the same belief to two or more believers. In the course of this defense it is argued that the standard propositional account of such sentences is insensitive to everyday language. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Index to Volume Fifty-SixArticlesBernier, Bernard, National Communion: Watsuji Tetsurō's Conception of Ethics, Power, and the Japanese Imperial State, 1 : 84-105Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture, Chai-sik Chung, 2 : 253-280Buxton, Nicholas, The Crow and the Coconut: Accident, Coincidence, and Causation in the Yogavāiṣṭha, 3 : 392-408Chan, Sin Yee, The Confucian Notion of Jing (Respect), Sin Yee Chan, 2 (...) : 229-252Chong, Kim-chong, Zhuangzi and the Nature of Metaphor, 3 : 370-391Chung, Chai-sik, Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture, 2 : 253-280The Confucian Ideal of Harmony, Chenyang Li, 4 : 583-603The Confucian Notion of Jing.(Respect), Sin Yee Chan, 2 : 229-252The Conventional Status of Reflexive Awareness: What's at Stake in a Tibetan Debate? Jay L. Garfield, 2 : 201-228The Crisis of Knowledge in Islam (I): The Case of al-'āmirī, Paul L. Heck, 1 : 106-135The Crow and the Coconut: Accident, Coincidence, and Causation in the Yogavāiṣṭha, Nicholas Buxton, 3 : 392-408De Reu, Wim, Right Words Seem Wrong: Neglected Paradoxes in Early Chinese Philosophical Texts, 2 : 281-300The Desire You Are Required to Get Rid of: A Functionalist Analysis of Desire in the Bhaga-vadgītā, Christopher Framarin, 4 : 604-617Framarin, Christopher, The Desire You Are Required to Get Rid of: A Functionalist Analysis of Desire in the Bhagavadgītā, 4 : 604-617Garfield, Jay L., The Conventional Status of Reflexive Awareness: What's at Stake in a Tibetan Debate? 2 : 201-228Heck, Paul L., The Crisis of Knowledge in Islam (I): The Case of al-'ā mirī, 1 : 106-135Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel, 4 : 519-566Ho, Chien-hsing, Saying the Unsayable, 3 : 409-427Kantor, Hans-Rudolf, Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan's (1909-1995) Interpretation of Zhiyi's (538-597) Tiantai Buddhism, 1 : 16-68Lai, Karyn, Li in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility, 1 : 69-83Li, Chenyang, The Confucian Ideal of Harmony, 4 : 583-603Li in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility, Karyn Lai, 1 : 69-83Ma, Lin, and Jaap van Brakel, Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, 4 : 519-566National Communion: Watsuji Tetsurō's Conception of Ethics, Power, and the Japanese Imperial State, Bernard Bernier, 1 : 84-105Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan's (1909-1995) Interpretation of Zhiyi's (538- 597) Tiantai Buddhism, Hans-Rudolf Kantor, 1 : 16-68Right Words Seem Wrong: Neglected Paradoxes in Early Chinese Philosophical Texts, Wim De Reu, 2 : 281-300The Role of Time in the Structure of Chinese Logic, Jinmei Yuan, 1 : 136-152Sakya Pandita and the Status of Concepts, Jonathan Stoltz, 4 : 567-582Saying the Unsayable, Chien-hsing Ho, 3 : 409-427Schiltz, Elizabeth, Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato's Phaedrus, 3 : 451-468Spackman, John, The Tiantai Roots of Dōgen's Philosophy of Language and Thought, 3 : 428-450Stevenson, Frank W., Zhuangzi's Dao as Background Noise, 2 : 301-331Stoltz, Jonathan, Sakya Pandita and the Status of Concepts, 4 : 567-582The Tiantai Roots of Dōgen's Philosophy of Language and Thought, John Spackman, 3 : 428-450 [End Page 709]Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato's Phaedrus, Elizabeth Schiltz, 3 : 451-468van Brakel, Jaap, and Lin Ma, Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, 4 : 519-566Yuan, Jinmei, The Role of Time in the Structure of Chinese Logic, 1 : 136-152Zhuangzi and the Nature of Metaphor, Kim-chong Chong, 3 : 370-391Zhuangzi's Dao as Background Noise, Frank W. Stevenson, 2 : 301-331Book NotesFenner, David E. W., Introducing Aesthetics (note by James McRae), 3 : 515-516Introducing Aesthetics, by David E. W. Fenner (note by James McRae), 3 : 515-516McRae, James, a book... (shrink)

This paper argues that a theory of situated vision, suited for the dual purposes of object recognition and the control of action, will have to provide something more than a system that constructs a conceptual representation from visual stimuli: it will also need to provide a special kind of direct (preconceptual, unmediated) connection between elements of a visual representation and certain elements in the world. Like natural language demonstratives (such as `this' or `that') this direct connection allows entities to be (...) referred to without being categorized or conceptualized. Several reasons are given for why we need such a preconcep- tual mechanism which individuates and keeps track of several individual objects in the world. One is that early vision must pick out and compute the relation among several individual objects while ignoring their properties. Another is that incrementally computing and updating representations of a dynamic scene requires keeping track of token individuals despite changes in their properties or locations. It is then noted that a mechanism meeting these requirements has already been proposed in order to account for a number of disparate empiri- cal phenomena, including subitizing, search-subset selection and multiple object tracking (Pylyshyn et al., Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 48(2) (1994) 260). This mechanism, called a visual index or FINST, is brie. (shrink)

Epistemic contextualism—the view that the content of the predicate ‘know’ can change with the context of utterance—has fallen into considerable disrepute recently. Many theorists have raised doubts as to whether ‘know’ is context-sensitive, typically basing their arguments on data suggesting that ‘know’ behaves semantically and syntactically in a way quite different from recognised indexicals such as ‘I’ and ‘here’ or ‘flat’ and ‘empty’. This paper takes a closer look at three pertinent objections of this kind, viz. at what I (...) call the Error-Theory Objection, the Gradability Objection and the Clarification-Technique Objection. The paper concludes that none of these objections can provide decisive evidence against contextualism. (shrink)

In everyday language use, the content of an indexical sentence is determined by the parameters of the context in which it occurs. In fictional discourse, however, indexical sentences seem to behave in a nonstandard way. This paper attempts to show that the difference can be best explained by using the concept of fictional perspective.

The subject of this book is the first person in thought and language. The main question concerns what we mean when we say 'J'. Related to it are questions about what kinds of self-consciousness and self-knowledge are needed in order for us to have the capacity to talk about ourselves. The emphasis is on theories of meaning and reference for 'J', but a fair amount of space is devoted to 'I' -thoughts and the role of the concept of the self (...) in cognition. The purpose is to give a picture of how we think and talk about ourselves in a wide range of circumstances. The topic has been discussed in numerous articles during the last decades, but rarely in the form of a monograph. I felt the need for a book of this kind while working on my dissertation. The manuscript is the result of many years of reflection on the self and indexicals. Some of the theories that I advance have developed as a result of my teaching an undergraduate course in the philosophy of language the last couple of years. (shrink)

This paper is a comparison of Kripke’s and Künne’s interpretations of Frege’s theory of indexicals, especially concerning Frege’s remarks on time as “part of the expression of thought”. I analyze the most contrasting features of Kripke’s and Künne’s interpretations of Frege’s remarks on indexicals. Subsequently, I try to identify a common ground between Kripke’s and Künne’s interpretations, and hint at a possible convergence between those two views, stressing the importance given by Frege to nonverbal signs in defining the content (...) of thought. I conclude by indicating a possible direction for further research. (shrink)

Indexicality is a feature of predicates and predicate components (verbs, adjectives, adverbs and the like) as well as of referring expressions. With classic referring indexicals such as 'I' or 'that' a distinctive rule takes us from token and context to some item present in the content which is the semantic correlate of the token. Predicates and predicate components may function in an analogous fashion. For example 'thus' is an indexical adverb which latches onto some manner of performance present (...) in its context. 'John sang thus', said while indicating someone singing discordantly, claims that John sang discordantly. The phenomenon of predicatival indexicality is widespread in English and is expressed in a variety of idioms. Indexical predication plays important epistemological and psychological roles and the notion may have other interesting philosophical applications. (shrink)

Self-awareness is commonly expressed by means of indexical expressions, primarily, first- person pronouns like.

It is argued that propositions cannot be the compositional semantic values of sentences (in context) simply due to issues stemming from the compositional semantics of modal operators (or modal quantifiers). In particular, the fact that the arguments for double indexing generalize to multiple indexing exposes a fundamental tension in the default philosophical conception of semantic theory. This provides further motivation for making a distinction between two sentential semantic contents—what (Dummett 1973) called “ingredient sense” and “assertoric content”.

In “Now the French are invading England” (Analysis 62, 2002, pp. 34-41), Komarine Romdenh-Romluc offers a new theory of the relationship between recorded indexicals and their content. Romdenh-Romluc’s proposes that Kaplan’s basic idea, that reference is determined by applying a rule to a context, is correct, but we have to be careful about what the context is, since it is not always the context of utterance. A few well known examples illustrate this. The “here” and “now” in “I am (...) not here now” on an answering machine do not refer to the time and place of the original utterance, but to the time the message is played back, and the place its attached telephone is located. Any occurrence of “today” in a newspaper or magazine refers not to the day the story in which it appears was written, nor to the day the newspaper or magazine was printed, but to the cover date of that publication. Still, it is plausible that for each (token of an) indexical there is a salient context, and that “today” refers to the day of its context, “here” to the place of its context, and soon. Romdenh-Romluc takes this to be true, and then makes a proposal about what the salient context is. It is “the context that Ac would identify on the basis of cues that she would reasonably take U to be exploiting.” (39) Ac is the relevant audience, “the individual who it is reasonable to take the speaker to be addressing”, and who is assumed to be linguistically competent and attentive. (So Ac might not be the person U intends to address. This will not matter for what follows.) The proposal seems to suggest that it is impossible to trick a reasonably attentive hearer about what the referent of a particular indexical is. Since such trickery does seem possible, Romdenh-Romluc’s theory needs (at least) supplementation. I present two examples of such tricks. (shrink)

Call a thought whose expression involves the utterance of an indexical an indexical thought. Thus, my thoughts that I’m annoyed, that now is not the right time, that this is not acceptable, are all indexical thoughts. Such thoughts present a prima facie problem for the thesis that thought contents are phenomenally individuated -- i.e., that each distinct thought type has a proprietarily cognitive phenomenology such that its having that phenomenology makes it the thought that it is -- (...) given the assumption that phenomenology is intrinsically determined. My concern in this paper is to blunt standard intuitions concerning the external individuation of indexical thought contents, and to defend a conception of indexical thought content that is entirely phenomenal and internalist. (shrink)

Continuous sedation until death (CSD), the act of reducing or removing the consciousness of an incurably ill patient until death, often provokes medical–ethical discussions in the opinion sections of medical and nursing journals. Some argue that CSD is morally equivalent to physician-assisted death (PAD), that it is a form of “slow euthanasia.” A qualitative thematic content analysis of opinion pieces was conducted to describe and classify arguments that support or reject a moral difference between CSD and PAD. Arguments pro (...) and contra a moral difference refer basically to the same ambiguous themes, namely intention, proportionality, withholding artificial nutrition and hydration, and removing consciousness. This demonstrates that the debate is first and foremost a semantic rather than a factual dispute, focusing on the normative framework of CSD. Given the prevalent ambiguity, the debate on CSD appears to be a classical symbolic struggle for moral authority. (shrink)

The particular behavior exhibited by sentences featuring predicates of personal taste such as “tasty” may drive us to claim that their truth depends on the context of assessment, as MacFarlane does. MacFarlane considers two ways in which the truth of a sentence can depend on the context of assessment. On the one hand, we can say that the sentence expresses a proposition whose truth-value depends on the context of assessment. This is MacFarlane’s position, which he calls “truth relativism” and, following (...) Weatherson, I rebrand as “nonindexical relativism”. On the other hand, we can say that what proposition a sentence expresses depends on the context of assessment. MacFarlane calls this position “content relativism” and rejects it on the grounds that it leads to implausible readings of certain sentences and is unable to account for the speaker’s authority over the content of her assertions. In this paper, I too argue against content relativism, which, again following Weatherson, I rebrand as “indexical relativism”. However, my arguments against the theory are different from MacFarlane’s, which I prove unsound. In particular, I show that any version of indexical relativism will be unable to account for at least one of the phenomena that have been standardly used to motivate nonindexical relativism—faultless disagreement and retraction—in most of the ways in which it has been proposed to understand them. (shrink)

This is a study of the epistemology of indexical reference, Or its foundation in the intentionality of the speaker's awareness of the referent. Where the referent is the object of the speaker's acquaintance on that occasion, The sense expressed is the generic content of that awareness. This, Indexical sense determines indexical reference, But indexical sense works by appeal to the context of the speaker's awareness of the referent. It is discussed how, By virtue of (...) class='Hi'>indexical sense, Indexical reference is rigid, I.E. Picks out the same referent in any possible world. (shrink)

This paper discusses two notational variance views with respect to indexical singular reference and content: the view that certain forms of Millianism are at bottom notational variants of a Fregean theory of reference, the Fregean Notational Variance Claim; and the view that certain forms of Fregeanism are at bottom notational variants of a direct reference theory, the Millian Notational Variance Claim. While the former claim rests on the supposition that a direct reference theory could be easily turned into (...) a particular version of a neo-Fregean one by showing that it is bound to acknowledge certain senselike entities, the latter claim is based upon the supposition that a neo-Fregean theory could be easily turned into a particular version of a Millian one by showing that De Re senses are theoretically superfluous and hence eliminable. The question how many accounts of singular reference and content are we confronted with here — Two different (and mutually antagonistic) theories? Or just two versions of what is in essence the same theory? — is surely of importance to anyone interested in the topic. And this question should be answered by means of a careful assessment of the soundness of each of the above claims. Before trying to adjudicate between the two accounts, one would naturally want to know whether or not there are indeed two substantially disparate accounts. Grosso modo, if the Fregean Claim were sound then we would have a single general conception of singular reference to deal with, viz. Fregeanism; likewise, if the Millian Claim were sound we would be facing a single general conception of singular reference, viz. Millianism. My view is that both the Fregean Notational Variance Claim and its Millian counterpart are wrong, though naturally on different grounds. I have argued elsewhere that the Fregean Notational Variance Claim - considered in its application to the semantics of propositional-attitude reports involving proper names — is unsound. I intend tosupplement in this paper such a result by trying to show that the Millian Claim - taken in its application to the semantics of indexical expressions — should also be rated as incorrect. I focus on a certain set of arguments for the Millian Claim, arguments which I take as adequately representing the general outlook of the Millian theorist with respect to neo-Fregeanism about indexicals and which involve issues about the cognitive significance of sentences containing indexical terms. (shrink)

Cappelen and Dever have recently defended the view that indexicals are not essential: They do not signify anything philosophically deep and we do not need indexicals for any important philosophical work. This paper contests their view from the point of view of an account of intentional agency. It argues that we need indexicals essentially when accounting for what it is do something intentionally and, as a consequence, intentional action, and defends a view of intentional action as a possible conclusion of (...) practical reasoning where the indexical is essential for the content of such a conclusion. (shrink)

This book argues that there is a common cognitive mechanism underlying all indexical thoughts, in spite of their seeming diversity. Indexical thoughts are mental representations, such as beliefs and desires. They represent items from a thinker's point of view or her cognitive perspective. We typically express them by means of sentences containing linguistic expressions such as 'this ' or 'that ', adverbs like 'here', 'now', and 'today', and the personal pronoun 'I'. While generally agreeing that representing the world (...) from a thinker's cognitive perspective is a key feature of indexical thoughts, philosophers disagree as to whether a thinker's cognitive perspective can be captured and rationalized by semantic content and, if so, what kind of content this is. This book surveys competing views and then advances its own positive account. Ultimately, it argues that a thinker's cognitive perspective - or her indexical point of view - is to be explained in terms of the content that is believed and asserted as the only kind of content that there is which thereby serves as the bearer of cognitive significance. The Indexical Point of View will be of interest to philosophers of mind and language, linguists, and cognitive scientists. (shrink)

In this essay I will defend a novel version of the indexical view on proper names. According to this version, proper names have a relatively sparse truth-conditional meaning that is represented by their rigid content and indexical character, but a relatively rich use-conditional meaning, which I call the (contextual) constraint of a proper name. Firstly, I will provide a brief outline of my favoured indexical view on names in contrast to other indexical views proposed in (...) the relevant literature. Secondly, two general motivations for an indexical view on names will be introduced and defended. Thirdly, I will criticize the two most popular versions of the indexical view on names: formal variable accounts and salience-based formal constant accounts. In the fourth and final section, I will develop my own use-conditional indexical view on names in three different steps by confronting an initial version of this view with three different challenges. (shrink)

This thesis consists of four essays and an introduction dedicated to two main topics: indexicality and presupposition. The first essay is concerned with an alleged problem for the standard treatment of indexicals on which their linguistic meanings are functions from context to content. Since most indexicals have their content settled, on an occasion of use, by the speaker’s intentions, some authors have argued that this standard picture is inadequate. By demonstrating that intentions can be seen as a parameter (...) of the kind of context that characters operate on, these arguments are rejected. In addition, it is argued that a more recent, variable-based framework is naturally interpreted as an intention-sensitive semantics. The second essay is devoted to the phenomenon of descriptive uses of indexicals on which such an expression seems to contribute, not its standard reference as determined by its character, but a property to the interpretation. An argument that singular readings of the cases in question are incoherent is shown to be incorrect, and an approach to descriptive readings is developed on which they arise from e-type uses akin to other well known cases. Further, descriptive readings of the relevant kind are seen to arise only in the presence of adverbs of quantification, and all sentences in which such an adverb takes scope over an indexical are claimed to be ambiguous between a referential and an e-type reading. The third essay discusses a version of the variable analysis of pronouns on which their descriptive meanings are relegated to the so-called phi-features – person, gender and number. In turn, the phi-features are here seen as triggering semantic presuppositions that place constraints on the definedness of pronouns, and ultimately of sentences in which they appear. It is argued that the descriptive information contributed by the phi-features diverges radically from presuppositional information of both semantic and pragmatic varieties on several dimensions of comparison, and instead the main role of the phi-features is seen to be that of guiding hearers’ attempts to ascertain the speaker’s intentions. The fourth essay addresses an issue concerning the treatment of presuppositions in dynamic semantics. Representing a semantic treatment of pragmatic presuppositions, the dynamic framework is shown to incorrectly regard conversational infelicity as sufficient for semantic undefinedness, given the standard way of defining truth in terms of context change. Further, it is shown that a proposal for a solution fail to make correct predictions for epistemic modals. A novel framework is developed on which context change potentials act on contexts that have more structure than the contexts usually countenanced by dynamic semantics, and it is shown that this framework derives truth from context change while making correct predictions for both presuppositions and modals. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Half Title Title Copyright Contents Preface List of Abbreviations.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:53. AN INDEX OF HUME'S REFERENCES IN A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE The index below of Hume's references in the Treatise te the works of other authors excludes those which are accurate and full in his text (of which there are few) and those which are so general, e.g., to Spinoza's atheism, that no passage is specifiable. Hume mentions other writings, for which this index is compiled, in (...) several different ways. Occasionally he mentions the author's name, the title of his book and gives a reference which is less specific than it could be. These have been identified. Often he mentions an author's name only, e.g., de Retz, and in such cases the fullest possible reference has been given. One of Hume's notable intellectual gifts was his ability to distil several pages of a book into one or two sentences of crisp and accurate synthesis. (This skill is most apparent in his summaries of articles in Bayle' s Dictionary in his "Notes on Philosophy", of which the manuscript is in the Royal Society of Edinburgh Library.) In these instances, page references are impossible and the closest indication one can give is a section or chapter. Some of his references are anonymous, e.g., as an 'elegant writer' says, and so are some quotations. These have been identified with one exception. One anonymous reference (number 24 below) requires explanation because it is both anachronistic and interesting. Hume refers to an observation by "a late eminent philosopher". It is anachronistic because the book to which he refers was published after the Treatise; it is interesting because it provides further evidence of Hutcheson's influence on Hume and the latter' s regard for him. The explanation, for Hutcheson was still alive when Vol.11 of the Treatise appeared in 1739, is that 'late' is here being used in the sense of 'recent' - Hutcheson himself uses the word in the same way in referring to Mandeville when the latter was 54. alive. (An enquiry concerning moral good and evil. Section 1, VI.) Further, the System circulated widely among Hutcheson's friends in Scotland and over so many years that it finally appeared posthumously. That Hume could not cite a published work also accounts for the anonymity of the reference to someone he admired. It is often impossible to determine in which language or in which edition Hume read a particular author. Where there is evidence as to which language he used, the title has been given in that language. There are now so many extant editions of the Treatise that Volume, Part, Chapter and Section references are given, as well as the pagination of Selby-Bigge' s edition, so that readers of other editions may be able to use the index. 1.Vol. 1. Title-page. Tacitus, The Histories, Bk. I. 1. 2.Part 1, Sect. 1, p. 2, n. John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Bk. I, Chap. I, 8. 3.Sect. VII, p. 17, n. George Berkeley, A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Introductixi, Sect. 7, e_t seq. 4.Part II, Sect. II, p. 30, n. Nicolas de Malezieu, Elementa Geometrica. 5.Sect. Ill, p. 35, n. John Locke, Essay, Bk. II, Chap. XIV. 6.Sect. IV, p. 43, n. Antoine Arnauld, La logique ou l'art de penser. Part I, Chap. 5. (In some editions Pierre Nicole is named as co-author. The book is also known as the Port Royal Logic). 7.Sect. IV, p. 46, n. Isaac Barrow, Mathematical Lectures. 8.Part III, Sect. Ill, p. 80, n. Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Philosophy, Part Second, Chap. 9. And Tripos : in Three Discourse. Ill, of Liberty and Necessity. 55. Sect. Ill, p. 80, n. e.g., Samuel Clarke, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, Props. I-III, et. seq. 10.Sect. Ill, p. 81, n. John Locke, Essay, Bk. IV, Chap. X. 11.Sect. VIII, p. 100 and appendix Vol. Ill, p. 630. Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, Bk. V. 1.2. 12.Sect. XIII, p. 153. Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz, Mémoires, Bk. III. The second 'observation' is from Book... (shrink)

In this essay, I specify types of representational content that can be attributed to Kant’s account of representation. The more specific aim is to examine which of these types of content can be regarded as possible without the application of concepts. In order to answer the question, I proceed as follows. First, I show how intuition (in Kant’s sense) can be seen as providing indexical content independently of empirical concepts. Second, I show in what sense the (...) generation of spatial content can be regarded as non-categorial. A key distinction is that a perceptual examination of an object can be understood as thoroughly sensible and particular, whereas a conceptual determination always grasps the object via its generalisable features. Third, I propose that the faculties of sensibility and understanding are not only separable in principle, but that their contributions remain in a certain sense separate in actual cognition as well. This is to say that a conceptual determination of an object does not entail that the object ceases to be non-conceptually available to the perceiver, which further suggests the autonomy of sensibility and its perceptual content. Finally, I raise difficulties in attributing non-conceptual representational content to Kant’s judgment-centered stance on representation and experience, only to emphasise how these difficulties easily lead to a misappreciation of Kant’s fundamental distinction between sensibility and understanding and their unique cognitive contributions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant-Index: Band 5: Stellenindex und Konkordanz zur "Wiener Logik,"Riccardo PozzoNorbert Hinske. Kant-Index: Band 5: Stellenindex und Konkordanz zur "Wiener Logik," Erstellt in Zusammenarbeit mit Heinrich P. Delfosse und Michael Oberhausen unter Mitwirkung von Hans-Werner Bartz, Christian Popp, Tina Strauch und Michael Trauth. Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 1999. Pp. Cxiii + 865.The Wiener Logik has long led a shadowy existence. This has nothing to do with the quality of (...) the text, but rather with accidental conditions. When the manuscript of the Wiener Logik was discovered in 1913, the planning of the Akademie-Ausgabe of Kant's complete works had already been largely completed and eight volumes of the works, three of the correspondence and two of the Nachlaß were published. Erich Adickes' edition of Kant's Reflexionen über die Logik appeared in 1914. Hinske suggests that, had Adickes considered it, the Wiener Logik would have played a valuable role in integrating Kant's reflections (xi). This double-volume makes up for all this by highlighting the relevance of this lecture transcript with special reference to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, which is close to it not only in time but also systematically. It contains a lemmatized main index that makes a recognition of the language of the logic course possible and a concordance that allows one to check the corresponding passages. The introduction and more than twenty pages of editorial notes elaborate on the relationship of the Wiener Logik to other Kantian texts while correcting and integrating the references to sources indicated in its 1966 edition by Gerhard Lehmann within the Akademie-Ausgabe (lxxii-xcvi). At the same time, the index correcs more than one hundred fifty errors of the 1966 edition (lviii-lxvii).The Wiener Logik was translated into English by J. Michael Young in the volume of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant dedicated to the Lectures on Logic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 251-377). Young made clear that the Wiener Logik is constituted by two different parts (ibid., xxv f.). In fact the manuscript shows a first part written by the hand of a professional copyist, which covers Kant's course until almost the end of the theory of judgement (Akademie-Ausgabe, vol. 24, 790-937), and a second part constituted by a single page written by another hand (probably a student while sitting in Kant's classroom), which deals with the very end of the theory of judgement and the beginning of the theory of syllogism (ibid., 937-40). One needs to recall, though, that the text of the Wiener Logik is incomplete, given that a large part of the theory of syllogism as well as the theory of method, of discourse and of character are missing. The first part of the Wiener Logik shows several parallels with the edited fragments of the Logik Hoffmann (ibid., 944-52), while the second part shows parallels with the Logik Hechsel, which was discovered in 1983 and has recently been made accessible by Tilman Pinder (cf. Logik-Vorlesungen: Unveröffentliche Nachschriften, Hamburg: Meiner, 1998, 271-499). In fact, J. Michael Young found it convenient to complete his translation of the missing parts of the Wiener Logik by the attaching to it the corresponding parts of the Logik Hechsel (cf. Lectures on Logic, 381-423).Hinske provides new arguments as regards the dating of the Wiener Logik by objecting to both the late dating to the nineties suggested by Wilhelm Jerusalem and the early dating before 1781 by Reinhard Brandt and Tilman Pinder. Hinske remarks that while for the terminus ad quem one should consider the years indicated on the frontispice (1794 [End Page 284] and 1796), the terminus a quo should be set after the final redaction of the Critique of Pure Reason (xxiii f.). Following Hinske's lead and on the basis of an accurate examination on the cross-references between the texts, Bruno Bianco has proposed that the terminus a quo be set not before the publication of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (cf. the Italian translation edited by Bianco, Milan: Angeli, forthcoming).What makes the Wiener Logik and this index particularly interesting for Kant... (shrink)